I'm presenting at a conference this weekend. It's called Shakespeare Connects, and it will be at Grand Valley's downtown campus. I'm pretty excited for my first real academic presentation. I presented a couple of years ago at a writing center conference in Traverse City (with my boss), but this one feels different. This one is solo, and I'm adapting a chapter from my book for it. I think I'm about finished with most of the prep work: the cutting and altering of the text and the (probably too lame) PowerPoint. I just need to practice, practice, practice. I'm using a couple of speeches from Richard III, so I really have to make sure I brush up on my acting, otherwise it could be painful.

The same day we're going with Ted and Tara to a Tiger's game--nearly the last one of the regular season. Yea! It's my reward for presenting at the conference, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. It's also our anniversary weekend. Our anniversary is this Thursday, but where will I be Thursday night? Not celebrating with my wonderful husband of 4 years. No, I'll be teaching at Grand Valley. At least it's a good class.

I finally finished Neal Stephenson's Crytonomicon. Tedious! It took me months to work through it (I read several other things in the meantime!). Right now, after being done with it for 12 hours, I have to say the payoff wasn't worth the time--1100+ pages and my satisfaction lies solely in the fact that I'm finally done with it. It wasn't terrible and it wasn't poorly written (it was actually really well written), it was just really, really long, and I expect considerable payoff when I've invested that much time and energy.